why homemade cleaning solutions that use baking soda AND vinegar work, don’t they just neutralize each other?

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why homemade cleaning solutions that use baking soda AND vinegar work, don’t they just neutralize each other?

In: Chemistry

6 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

If you use way more baking soda than vinegar, then only some of the baking soda gets neutralized, so you just end up with fizzy baking soda.

Anonymous 0 Comments

How about we start listing things that DO work that may be niche 🙂
-Ammonia on grease
-Goofoff on tar
-Orange oil on thermal compounds
-Alcohol on oil
-Nature’s miracle enzyme spray on fabrics for all bodily fluids
-Simple green on smoke from fire/bbq and slimey mold on pavers
-Vinegar on water kettle and other calcium/hard water deposits
-Vinegar for grout haze on tiles that just got put down
-Magic eraser on latex wall paint that had something leave a mark
-Polishing paste/baking soda for burned-on glass stove stains
-Copper spray for black mold
-Shower foaming spray for inside of windshield
-Armorall car fabric wipes for arm rests and steering wheel

Edited below with additional stuff:
-wet baby wipes for small droplet splatter on bathroom cabinets

Anonymous 0 Comments

They don’t, at least not in the way you mean I’m pretty sure. Mixing those two things makes a lot of fizzy bubbles, which is something people associate with cleaning products, but “bubblee” and “cleans” are not inextricably linked.

It probably works at least as well as water would, and water and scrubbing will get most things clean. So if you mix vinegar and baking soda and then try to clean something with it there’s a decent chance it will still come clean, but not because that mixture is neccesarily an especially effective cleaning solution.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The two chemicals combined do a lot of fizzing and bubbling which I suppose may have some sort of physical benefit but I doubt it. The resulting chemical is sodium acetate which basically is pretty much useless when it comes to cleaning. The other one that gets me is when people specify original blue Dawn the essential dish detergent to use in a cleaning formula, as though nobody else has been able to duplicate their chemical formula in 30 or 40 years that stuff has been around

Anonymous 0 Comments

They don’t work. When cleaning use one or the other, never both. Those make good cleaning agents specifically because they are reactive. When you mix them all you are doing is reducing their reactivity and therefore the effectiveness.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Ime they don’t do anything, for exactly the reason you said. I think people think they’re doing something because they see the reaction and feel the fizz must mean it’s working.

It’s never cleaned a thing for me. Give me actual cleaning supplies.